


Dress You Down

by thecoldlightofday



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-19
Updated: 2013-04-19
Packaged: 2017-12-08 22:50:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/766975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecoldlightofday/pseuds/thecoldlightofday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shane visits Rick in the hospital.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dress You Down

The nurse was just finishing bathing Rick when Shane came in, a bundle of stem-less, drooping flowers in his hand. They’d been perky that morning when he bought them, but in the heat of the day they’d started to wilt and die. Setting the flowers down in the plain, colorless vase the hospital had provided, Shane thought he’d have to get Rick something nicer than that. Something nicer than the yellow and peach floral bouquet the pretty little florist at the market had talked him into. The bright colors give off a healing energy, she’d said. At the time, healing energy had sounded like it would do Rick some good.

“It’ll just be another minute,” the nurse said politely, wringing water from her sponge. She used it to dab swiftly, efficiently, at Rick’s temples and across his forehead. Satisfied, she dropped it back into her bin. “I just have to get him dressed.”

“I can do that,” he offered, hair on the back of his neck prickling. It felt wrong to have to watch Rick be laid out like that, wiped down and dressed up like a nurse’s doll. It was better after she’d nodded all skeptic and left the two of them, so he was the only one who had to see Rick so pale and gaunt, ribs starting to poke out under his skin. A week of nothing but IV fluids, no movement except for when the nurses came in every two hours to turn him, and Rick was starting to look a little too much like death.

Shane stood beside Rick’s bed for a minute, watching how beneath his eyelids, Rick’s eyes barely even moved. Then he got to it, took the folded hospital gown off the chair beside him. The nurse had already wrestled on Rick’s boxers, though he wouldn’t have had a problem with that. He’d seen Rick at every stage of his life. There was no embarrassment once you’d seen someone be every part themselves.

He slid an arm underneath Rick’s shoulders, curved it to him, and used it to get Rick into a position that was half sitting up. He shook the gown out and slid one of Rick’s arms into it easy even though Rick wasn’t more than meat—dead weight and muscle. Before he set Rick down again he made sure the gown stretched all the way across his back, around to his other arm and shoulder.

He was reminded of being a kid and having sleepovers, him and Rick in the early mornings helping each other do the tricky buttons on each other’s shirts, Rick tying his shoes for him the times he forgot.

“Lori really wanted to bring Carl by today,” Shane said, easing Rick back onto the bed. He walked around to Rick’s other side and lifted his arm under the elbow and the wrist. Rick’s wrist felt thin in his hand, limply heavy, hollow boned like a bird. Like he could break Rick if he tried. “But she didn’t think it was a good time. They’re coming by tomorrow, though.”

Rick didn’t stir at that. Not that Shane had expected him to. So far, Rick hadn’t opened his eyes once.

Getting Rick’s second arm in the sleeve was a struggle. Rick’s arm didn’t bend right, not when he wasn’t the one to move it, and Shane was trying his best to be careful, afraid that he might accidentally make Rick bust a stitch. It took ten minutes of him wriggling Rick’s arm into the sleeve slowly, inch by inch. Shane thought it was too hot to bother to try and get the gown closed. He just left it open, Rick’s chest framed in generic baby blue.

“There,” he said, patting Rick on the shoulder as he took a seat. “Gotta show off your wares for the nurses, man. Bet coming to check on you is the highlight of their day. All ‘oh that Officer Grimes is so handsome’.” Shane gave his best imitation of a nurse in his best falsetto, not surprised, but somehow still disappointed, when Rick didn’t laugh and tell him to shut his mouth.


End file.
